The Japanese election campaign may have spawned an ingenious new marketing tactic: take a relatively unknown product, have it berated in public by an unpopular politician, and watch sales soar.
Sales of the French cheese Mimolette have taken off since the former prime minister, Yoshiro Mori, one of the most unpopular Japanese leaders of modern times, turned his nose up at it in a bizarre television interview following a crisis meeting with the prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi.
Early last month the rotund Mori emerged red-faced from a meeting at Koizumi’s residence to complain that all he had been offered by the prime minister was a few cans of foreign beer, dried salmon and cheese ”so hard and shriveled that I couldn’t bite into it”.
He had tried, and failed, to persuade Koizumi not to call a snap election following the defeat of the latter’s postal reform bills in the upper house of the Japanese Parliament.
Mori, however, seemed more annoyed by his boss’s perceived gastronomical slight and even held up a crushed beer can and a piece of the offending cheese to emphasise his disgust. ”I was expecting some sushi at least,” he said.
Gourmands recognised the orangey-brown chunk proffered by Mori as Mimolette, a cow’s milk cheese from the Lille region of France, whose flavour improves as it matures and hardens.
Several Japanese suppliers say they have run out of Mimolette, and Takashimaya, a department store chain, said sales of the cheese were three times higher than the average for August.
”Sales of Mimolette have really taken off,” a Takashimaya spokesperson told Reuters. ”We did not expect this at all.”
Mori, prime minister for a year from April 2000, heads a powerful faction in the ruling Liberal Democratic party but his gaffe-prone prime ministership turned him into one of Japan’s most reviled politicians.
In echoes of pre-war militarism, he described Japan as ”a divine nation with the emperor at its centre,” and continued a round of golf after learning that nine Japanese fisheries students and teachers had been killed when their training vessel was accidentally struck by a US submarine off Hawaii in February 2001.
Despite Mori’s displeasure at the hospitality on offer chez Koizumi, the two reportedly made up for the sake of party unity and are planning a post-election dinner, over a selection of cheese, at an exclusive Tokyo restaurant. The prime minister is expected to pick up the bill. – Guardian Unlimited Â